Important notice from the GRAMMAR POLICE. Plz read. This means you.

[Annan]

If Danish is anything like Swedish, there are rules for which words are en or et/ett, but they haven't been taught in ages. My grandmother was taught it when she had grammar in school (she's born in 1919), but I don't think my mother was. In my grammar classes the teachers said it "didn't matter", "because everyone knows it by sound", which makes me curious of how they teach it to immigrants (my guess is they don't, BTW).

This is interesting. I will have to look it up. Thanks for mentioning it.
Especially because with the amount of English words in the language, those rules are needed to not make people sound like retards.

The Swedish rules are here http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantiv, but the Danish page on nouns on Wikipedia is retarded and doesn't say anything about it. :/

[Jelenedra]

Oh look, rufio has diversified and is now sharing his grammar learnings (or lack thereof) in more than just his mother tongue. Non English speakers the world over will now rejoice that they no longer have to follow his ramblings with subtitles. Huzzah!

Don't encourage it. We get more than enough in English grammar threads.

[Tsarina]

The Swedish rules are here http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantiv, but the Danish page on nouns on Wikipedia is retarded and doesn't say anything about it. :/

The Danish Wikipedia is generally very bad. I suspect I'll have to drag myself to the library and find books on the subject

[ZeKat]

If Danish is anything like Swedish, there are rules for which words are en or et/ett, but they haven't been taught in ages. My grandmother was taught it when she had grammar in school (she's born in 1919), but I don't think my mother was. In my grammar classes the teachers said it "didn't matter", "because everyone knows it by sound", which makes me curious of how they teach it to immigrants (my guess is they don't, BTW).

Yeah, I am pretty sure that there are rules somewhere, but I have never ever actually heard of them. Not even when I lived in the Faeroe Islands where Danish is taught as a second language. So they aren't taught, native Danes are just expected to know.

Fake edit: I went and looked it up, and there is NOTHING about en/et in my huge Danish dictionary. They must expect you to learn them by heart, since every single word is marked as either en or et, but there is no rule mentioned.
The closest I can get to a rule is that things with a gender is "en", the rest is it. So a man, woman, cow, girl and so on, is "en". A house or a tree is "et". However, a sheep is also "et", and a rock is "en", so the rule only takes you so far...

I am pretty sure immigrants are taught to look every single word up and memorize it, really.

The Danish Wikipedia is generally very bad.

Well, there's too few editors. There's only like 6 million people who speak Danish worldwide. Most Danes I know only use the English one anyway, except the ones who are 12 and no speak no English.

[Jelenedra]

Fake edit: I went and looked it up, and there is NOTHING about en/et in my huge Danish dictionary. They must expect you to learn them by heart, since every single word is marked as either en or et, but there is no rule mentioned.
The closest I can get to a rule is that things with a gender is "en", the rest is it. So a man, woman, cow, girl and so on, is "en". A house or a tree is "et". However, a sheep is also "et", and a rock is "en", so the rule only takes you so far...

I am pretty sure immigrants are taught to look every single word up and memorize it, really.

Maybe because rocks come from "Mother" Earth? *shrugs* Lots of weird stuff like that.

[Annan]

If Danish is anything like Swedish, there are rules for which words are en or et/ett, but they haven't been taught in ages. My grandmother was taught it when she had grammar in school (she's born in 1919), but I don't think my mother was. In my grammar classes the teachers said it "didn't matter", "because everyone knows it by sound", which makes me curious of how they teach it to immigrants (my guess is they don't, BTW).

Yeah, I am pretty sure that there are rules somewhere, but I have never ever actually heard of them. Not even when I lived in the Faeroe Islands where Danish is taught as a second language. So they aren't taught, native Danes are just expected to know.

Fake edit: I went and looked it up, and there is NOTHING about en/et in my huge Danish dictionary. They must expect you to learn them by heart, since every single word is marked as either en or et, but there is no rule mentioned.
The closest I can get to a rule is that things with a gender is "en", the rest is it. So a man, woman, cow, girl and so on, is "en". A house or a tree is "et". However, a sheep is also "et", and a rock is "en", so the rule only takes you so far...

I am pretty sure immigrants are taught to look every single word up and memorize it, really.

The Danish Wikipedia is generally very bad.

Well, there's too few editors. There's only like 6 million people who speak Danish worldwide. Most Danes I know only use the English one anyway, except the ones who are 12 and no speak no English.

Possibly there are three types of nouns, then: gendered (en), non-gendered (et) and irregular nouns (whatever the fuck they want to be).

[Lavandula]

I've been trying to learn Cantonese for 2 years now, an effort made more difficult by some of the local population. Certainly there are plenty of people, native Cantonese speakers, who encourage my efforts, but strangely it's often seen as something of a novelty that I would bother trying to learn to speak the predominant language where I live. This attitude puzzles me.

Regardless of what language I use to address someone here, many people will insist on responding in English. This is usually done in an attempt to be helpful, and while I appreciate the sentiment, it's hard to practice the local language when half the locals I meet are "too helpful" to speak to me in Cantonese. Others who reply in English appear to be doing much the same thing I am, taking the opportunity to practice a non-native tongue. In a third scenario, the person to whom I'm speaking is so enthusiastically impressed with my meager smattering of lingual skillz that regardless of what I just said or asked, the answer I receive is, "Wah, so good your Cantonese la!" Say thanks in Cantonese, begin to ask the question again. "You live here long time?" Two years, begin 3rd attempt at question. "Why you not speak Mandarin? Is much easier la." And there goes my bus. Thank you for your assistance.

It's so good to know that you're trying to learn Cantonese! Some of my friends have been in HK for over 10 years and they've never thought about learning it. I guess because a lot of us can speak English, my friends don't find the need to learn it.

[PirateFaafy]

Can be translated as follows and still be correct because "NO" doesn't have an English counterpart. It's merely a possessive marker.

"Cat of love"

"Cat's love"

No, try "love of cat(s)".  That is exactly what it means.  Those first two translations you gave are, in fact, wrong.

And, as I said before, the fact that you cannot translate literally word-for-word is the case with every single language.

ETA:  For anyone who was actually interested in the Cantonese questions (yeah, right), this is apparently what is going on.

The headpeen has managed to start being inconsistent within the space of a single post. That must be some sort of new record.

How many topics did we manage to go through over the course of this thread?

[rohina]

The headpeen has managed to start being inconsistent within the space of a single post. That must be some sort of new record.

You would think so, but no.

[rufio]

The headpeen has managed to start being inconsistent within the space of a single post. That must be some sort of new record.

I fail to see how the two statements are inconsistent.  The first is pointing out that (rake in face!) X no Y cannot ever be translated as X of Y/Y's X (e.g. Neko no ai -> Cat of Love).  The second statement is a general truism about all langauges.

[PirateFaafy]

The headpeen has managed to start being inconsistent within the space of a single post. That must be some sort of new record.

I fail to see how the two statements are inconsistent.  The first is pointing out that (rake in face!) X no Y cannot ever be translated as X of Y/Y's X (e.g. Neko no ai -> Cat of Love).  The second statement is a general truism about all languages.

If it's true of all languages, I fail to see why it shouldn't be for Japanese. The alternate translations that were provided are (almost) all identical in meaning, so unless you're insisting that there are direct, coherent translations for Japanese phrases into English, they would be acceptable. Either way, I think one of your statements is rendered objectively invalid.

[Audrey]

There are people who say "take" a decision?  My head would explode.

Come and live in South Africa, you would be headless.  Yes, they say 'take' a decision every time.  It freaks me out. 

[rufio]

If it's true of all languages, I fail to see why it shouldn't be for Japanese. The alternate translations that were provided are (almost) all identical in meaning, so unless you're insisting that there are direct, coherent translations for Japanese phrases into English, they would be acceptable. Either way, I think one of your statements is rendered objectively invalid.

There is actually a significant difference between "cat of love" and "love of cats" but I digress.

Of course something that is true for all languages is going to be true of Japanese.  Jelly was trying to suggest that this was a feature that was unique to east asian languages (which wouldn't make sense anyway, since Japanese is not actually related to Chinese in any way).  That was what I was disagreeing with.

[Jelenedra]

If it's true of all languages, I fail to see why it shouldn't be for Japanese. The alternate translations that were provided are (almost) all identical in meaning, so unless you're insisting that there are direct, coherent translations for Japanese phrases into English, they would be acceptable. Either way, I think one of your statements is rendered objectively invalid.

There is actually a significant difference between "cat of love" and "love of cats" but I digress.

Of course something that is true for all languages is going to be true of Japanese.  Jelly was trying to suggest that this was a feature that was unique to east asian languages (which wouldn't make sense anyway, since Japanese is not actually related to Chinese in any way).  That was what I was disagreeing with.

That's not what I was saying at all.

I was responding to someone that pointed out that Chinese English speakers were speaking accurately, if they did a direct translation from mandarin or cantonese into English. So I illustrated that the same could be said for the Japanese language. Because they don't 'go to the store'. They just 'store go', with the verbage getting some sort of distinction with how they chose to say it. But you had to stick your head peen in and try and prove you were smarter than me by supporting my statements.

Because I never understood why you followed up "Japanese can't be directly translated either" with "NO languages can be directly translated." Because...wow, you sure showed me by agreeing with me.

[Jorganza]

Can be translated as follows and still be correct because "NO" doesn't have an English counterpart. It's merely a possessive marker.

"Cat of love"

"Cat's love"

No, try "love of cat(s)".  That is exactly what it means.  Those first two translations you gave are, in fact, wrong.

Wrong, the second one is indeed correct. The particle no gives possessive, so neko no ai would translate as (the) cat's love.
"love of cat(s)" as a translation is only acceptable if love isn't used as a verb, like in "my love of cats has no bound"

[rufio]

Because they don't 'go to the store'. They just 'store go', with the verbage getting some sort of distinction with how they chose to say it.

Well, you picked a bad example, then, because there are far more grammatical elements there that you are deliberately not translating.  If you really want to do a word-for-word gloss, it would be something like "store ALL go.NPST.POL" for mise ni ikimasu.

My objection to your post was an objection to this statement:

Japanese and Chinese are similiar that way. You don't need things like "to the" in the language because it's implied. It helps that they have words(?) that do thinks like mark the subject of the sentence and another to imply what the verb is doing.

which is complete and utter bullshit from beginning to end.

Wrong, the second one is indeed correct. The particle no gives possessive, so neko no ai would translate as (the) cat's love.

You're right, I must have misread it.

"love of cat(s)" as a translation is only acceptable if love isn't used as a verb, like in "my love of cats has no bound"

Well, if 愛 is a verb, I had not heard about it.  Additionally, "no" can only be used to mark subjects in relative clauses, and I think there are some restrictions on it then, too.  Also, the word "love" in the "the cat's love" is not a verb either, so I'm not really sure I see your point.

[Jorganza]

"love of cat(s)" as a translation is only acceptable if love isn't used as a verb, like in "my love of cats has no bound"

Well, if 愛 is a verb, I had not heard about it.  Additionally, "no" can only be used to mark subjects in relative clauses, and I think there are some restrictions on it then, too.  Also, the word "love" in the "the cat's love" is not a verb either, so I'm not really sure I see your point.

I meant that when I first read "love of cats" I assumed (wrongly) you were trying to use ai as a verb.
That's not the case now though.

[DrNerd]

Don't worry about it, Jorganza.  Rufio's love of cats is nonstandard.

[Lorelei]

Rufio's love of cats is nonstandard.

Big Cat doesn't know whether to be nervous or relieved at this.

[Audrey]

Why do Americans leave the -ly off their adverbs.  It is chronic.  'That guy did so bad in his test'.  'I was mad in love with you.' 

I notice it all the time while watching American TV. 

Why do Americans say 'Labratory' instead of Laboratory with the accent on the 'o'? 

[chaos]

Don't you know? It's just not "cool" to be smart, and commercial television caters to the masses, which are largely of the troglodyte variety. Not all Americans make these sorts of egregious errors. That privilege is reserved for the uneducated and the terminally stupid.

[Audrey]

Don't you know? It's just not "cool" to be smart, and commercial television caters to the masses, which are largely of the troglodyte variety. Not all Americans make these sorts of egregious errors. That privilege is reserved for the uneducated and the terminally stupid.

Actually I think it's 'masses, who are...." due to the fact that masses refers to people in this instance.   

Even the supposedly erudite Americans on TV still make me cringe with this badly grammar. 

[Roflganger]

Don't you know? It's just not "cool" to be smart, and commercial television caters to the masses, which are largely of the troglodyte variety. Not all Americans make these sorts of egregious errors. That privilege is reserved for the uneducated and the terminally stupid.

Actually I think it's 'masses, who are...." due to the fact that masses refers to people in this instance.  

Even the supposedly erudite Americans on TV still make me cringe with this badly grammar.  

As an American living in South Africa, I have to cry foul.  People having casual conversation on a TV show are one thing; newscasters and the like who have a terrible grasp of grammar are another.  I can't watch TV in this country without cringing.  Note that I'm not referring to the differences between American English and SA/UK English, but legitimately horrid use of the language.

Edited for grammar, naturally.

[chaos]

Don't you know? It's just not "cool" to be smart, and commercial television caters to the masses, which are largely of the troglodyte variety. Not all Americans make these sorts of egregious errors. That privilege is reserved for the uneducated and the terminally stupid.

Actually I think it's 'masses, who are...." due to the fact that masses refers to people in this instance.   

Even the supposedly erudite Americans on TV still make me cringe with this badly grammar. 

You got me there.

[Audrey]

Don't you know? It's just not "cool" to be smart, and commercial television caters to the masses, which are largely of the troglodyte variety. Not all Americans make these sorts of egregious errors. That privilege is reserved for the uneducated and the terminally stupid.

Actually I think it's 'masses, who are...." due to the fact that masses refers to people in this instance.  

Even the supposedly erudite Americans on TV still make me cringe with this badly grammar.  

As an American living in South Africa, I have to cry foul.  People having casual conversation on a TV show are one thing; newscasters and the like who have a terrible grasp of grammar are another.  I can't watch TV in this country without cringing.  Note that I'm not referring to the differences between American English and SA/UK English, but legitimately horrid use of the language.

Edited for grammar, naturally.

Now that explains why you were so in-the-know about the bandwidth costs here.  Where do you live, maybe I can copy your legal version  . 

Are you talking about the South African use of the English language here?  I agree the grammar in this country is up to sh!t.  I was born here but bred in various countries and I can't get over how people keep 'taking decisions' instead of making them.   

However,  my husband and I both notice how often the -ly gets left off the adverbs in the US because we chorus -ly together when it happens - a lot.  Even Oprah and her guests do it.  I think it is becoming a national standard because people hear the wrong version of the adverb so often on US TV

And labratory??